About Nathan Durfee:

Nathan Durfee was born in the small town of Bethel, Vermont on June 26, 1983. Nathan’s artistic aspirations first showed themselves in the classroom: a self-described “doodler,” moments of boredom became sketches and designs in notebook margins. After spending his high school years in Nevada, he migrated South to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design to become a traditional portrait artist. As his current work boldly exhibits, Nathan instead decided to take his art in a unique, wholly personalized, direction. […]

His fanciful, often abstract, subjects share an organic connection with his informal school-day sketching. While working, he says, “I try to keep that wandering state of mind—as I start laying down brush strokes, a narrative begins to develop. I keep molding and polishing the story until I’m happy with it, and in most cases it’s something completely different than what I started out with.” (read more)

Visit Nathan Durfee official website.

…meanwhile, my work will continue to appear weekly in the observer for david mitchell’s column - here is this week’s illustration, out on sunday.

Here’s the related Observer’s article.

Previously on Skandalon

David Foldvari was born in Budapest, Hungary, but has lived in the UK for the last 20 years. His work often tackles issues of alienation, identity and belonging, formed by a preoccupation with his eastern European roots, combined with his experience of growing up in the UK.

David’s work is bold, darkly humorous and often political in tone, his considered and energetic draftsmanship having led to a prolific output both personally and commercially. Some of his previous clients include the New York Times, Greenpeace, Random House, Penguin Books, Dazed & Confused and Island Records. (Bigactive.com)

Visit David Foldvari’s blog. Some of his artwork can be purchase over at the Product of God online gallery.

Ben Tour is a 28 years old Vancouver based artist. More of his illustrations along with a 2006 interview with him over at FecalFace.com

Hark! A Vagrant! is an comic series by Kate Beaton:

Kate Beaton was born in Nova Scotia, took a history degree in New Brunswick, paid it off in Alberta, worked in a museum in British Columbia, then came to Ontario to draw pictures. (About)

Kate owns a degree in History and Anthropology from Mount Allison University.

If you mouse over the comic over at XKCD website, you get this comment:

‘Fucking ineffable’ sounds like someone remembering how to do self-censorship halfway through a phrase

Previously on Skandalon

Previously on Skandalon

Previously on Skandalon: Andy Rementer

This illustration was created by Felix Petruska for the cover of the Spanish translation (Blackie Books, 2009) of The Simpsons and Philosophy (Open Court Publishers, 2001).

Felix Petruska is a Barcelona based illustrator and designer. Check his blog and browse his Flickr’s albums.

About The Burt Britton Collection of artists’ self-portraits:

Picking up a bartending shift at the Village Vanguard, the famous New York jazz joint where he usually worked the door, Burt Britton found himself alone at last-call with just one final patron, Norman Mailer. After pouring the esteemed author a final drink, the question was put to Burt, “What do you want from me, Kid?” Exasperated at the end of the long shift, Burt inexplicably responded, “draw me your self-portrait,” handed him a piece of folded paper, and that, simply put, is how it all began.

That night in the mid-Sixties Mailer produced and gave to Britton an amazing object of self-expression, the first of hundreds to come, a self-portrait of the author more revealing than 1000 words. Inspired by Mailer’s product, Britton started to collect. Still at the Vanguard, he gathered self-portraits by Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock after landmark 1966 concerts, he even got a portrait from a New York high-school basketball phenomenon, Lew Alcindor, later the champion Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Moving to the legendary Strand bookstore in about 1968, Britton encountered novelists, poets, journalists, and critics, both the highly regarded and those just starting out. He would respectfully ask local and visiting literary luminaries such as Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Jorge Luis Borges to add their self-portrait to his album with the same democratic spirit that he offered the young John Irving, just months away from the fame that came with The World According to Garp. (Bloomsbury’s auction catalogue : PDF)

Bloomsbury’s catalogue contains every items in the Burt Britton Collection along with details and explanations about the Collection in general and some specific explanations about each self-portrait as well. Alternatively, one can browse the collection over at the Bloomsbury Auctions official website. Back in 2009, there was a story about this collection in The New York Times: “Self-Portraits Speak More Than Words” by James Barron, September 23th, 2009.

Previously on Skandalon : Don DeLillo

Previsously on Skandalon

Previously on Skandalon: Peanuts.

Vittorio Giardino (born December 24, 1946), is an Italian comic artist. Giardino was born in Bologna, where he graduated in electrical engineering in 1969. At the age of 30, he decided to leave his job and devote himself to comics. Two years later his first short story Pax Romana was published in La Città Futura, a weekly magazine published by the Federazione Giovanile Comunista Italiana and edited by Luigi Bernardi. […] Starting in 1984, Giardino produced a number of short stories for the Italian magazine Comic Art, where he introduced Little Ego, a young and sexy girl inspired by Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo who stars in one-page dreamy erotic stories. (wikipedia)

Milo Manara meets Little Nemo

Used copies of this book can still be find online (e.g. AbeBooks).

Previously on Skandalon